Actively Open-Minded Thinking Beliefs (AOT)

Haran, U., Ritov, I., & Mellers, B. A. (2013). The role of actively open-minded thinking in information acquisition, accuracy, and calibration. Judgment and Decision Making, 8, 188-201. (Uses a 7-item version.) Baron, J. (2019). Actively open-minded thinking in politics. Cognition, 188, 8-18. Baron, J. (in press). Actively open-minded thinking and the political effects of its absence. Draft chapter for Divided: Open-Mindedness and Dogmatism in a Polarized World (Victor Ottati and Chadly Stern, editors; Oxford University Press)

	Table of Contents
	Description
	References

Description:

Purpose	Assesses beliefs about whether actively open-minded thinking (as described in "Thinking and deciding") is good. This scale is based on a much longer version developed by Keith Stanovich and his collaborators. The present version is suitable for general adult populations. It has been found to correlate with various measures of reflective thinking and good performance (see Baron, in press, for a review). However, its original purpose was to show that the way people think is related to their beliefs about how they SHOULD think. It is not a measure of thinking itself.
Questions	The current version has 11 items.
Domain	Decision Style
Sample items	All questions. Answers on 5-point scale from "Completely disagree" to "Completely agree". R indicates reverse scoring. This is the current recommended version (Dec. 2021). It is just as reliable as previous versions and correlates just as highly with other measures, but it has more overconfidence-related items and fewer myside-bias items. Genuine experts, those who are worthy of trust, are willing to admit to themselves and others that they are uncertain or perplexed.* (1) People should take into consideration evidence that goes against conclusions they favor. (2) Being undecided or unsure is the result of muddled thinking. (3R) People should revise their conclusions in response to relevant new information. (4) Changing your mind is a sign of weakness. (5R) People should search actively for reasons why they might be wrong. (6) It is OK to ignore evidence against your established beliefs. (7R) It is important to be loyal to your beliefs even when evidence is brought to bear against them. (8R) There is nothing wrong with being undecided about many issues. (9) When faced with a puzzling question, we should try to consider more than one possible answer before reaching a conclusion. (10) It is best to be confident in a conclusion even when we have good reasons to question it. (11R) * The first item is a replacement for "True experts are willing to admit to themselves and others that they are uncertain or that they don't know the answer." The new version is clearer, and it correlates much better with the other items.

References:

Scale:
See above.

Uses:
Haran, U., Ritov, I., & Mellers, B. A. (2013). The role of actively open-minded thinking in information acquisition, accuracy, and calibration. Judgment and Decision Making, 8, 188-201.

Mellers, B., Ungar, L., Baron, J., Ramos, J. Gürçay, B., Fincher, K., Scott, S. E., Atanasov, P., Swift, S., Murray, T., Stone, E., & Tetlock, P. (2014). Psychological strategies for winning geopolitical forecasting tournaments. Psychological Science, 25, 1106-1115.

Baron, J., Scott, S., Fincher, K., & Metz, S. E. (2015). Why does the Cognitive Reflection Test (sometimes) predict utilitarian moral judgment (and other things)? Journal of Applied Research in Memory and Cognition, 4(3), 265-284.

Review:
Baron, J. (in press). Actively open-minded thinking and the political effects of its absence. Draft chapter for Divided: Open-Mindedness and Dogmatism in a Polarized World (Victor Ottati and Chadly Stern, editors; Oxford University Press)

Translation:
Bulgarian translation by Julia Kamburidis, Evelina Marinova, Ekaterina Peycheva, Nikolay R. Rachev (Джулия Камбуридис, Евелина Маринова, Екатерина Пейчева, Николай Р. Рачев)
*